Merchants, such as on-line retailers, brick and mortar retailers, service providers, etc., provide their products and services to consumers. One way of providing their products and services includes providing them directly to consumers through, for example, an online store associated with the merchant. That is, a consumer interested in a product sold by a merchant can visit the merchant's website, browse products, and purchase a selected product directly from the merchant.
Another way of providing products and services of merchants to consumers involves using intermediate parties, which offer the merchant products through an outlet of the intermediate parties. For example, a mobile device application provided an intermediate party, such as microblogging, social media, news, etc. application, may offer products of merchants for purchase by the users of the mobile application. In the example above, if a microblogging application were to offer a product of the merchant, the consumer seeking to purchase the product would be re-directed away from the microblogging application to the merchant's separate website. The consumer would then be forced away from the original application to complete the product purchase. The consumer would also be forced to later navigate back to the microblogging application after the transaction with the merchant has been completed.
Such a forced redirection causes several drawbacks to facilitating the purchase of products and/or services of the merchant. By diverting a user of an application away from that application, the user may not return to the application at the conclusion of the transaction. Conversely, a user of the application may avoid continuing with the transaction so that they are not forced to switch applications resulting in reduced transaction conversion due to the required switching of applications. Finally, a user who has been directed to a product or service of a merchant through the application may complete the transaction independent of the application's provider, thereby denying the application provider, which is responsible for initiating the purchase, any remuneration for their efforts.